1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of water conditioner servicing equipment.
2. Prior Art
In recent years water conditioning equipment has found widespread use in both commercial and residential applications. In most installations the equipment is intended for removal of minerals from the water though other equipment, such as by way of example, equipment for deionization of water is also known. The mineral removal type of water conditioning system, more commonly referred to as water softeners, are generally characterized by a tank filled with a special resin, with the tank having connections thereto so that water may be caused to flow through the resin without allowing the resin to escape. These tanks, which shall be referred to herein as the service tanks, are generally connected in series with a house water line; either the water line supplying the water heater if only hot soft water is desired, or in series with the entire house water supply if both hot and cold soft water are desired.
The service tanks generally are characterized by some form of quick disconnect for the inlet and outlet thereto so that the service tanks may be quickly removed and exchanged at the service site (home) by a serviceman.
The typical water softening process is actually an ion exchange process: used resin may be reactivated by flushing with a brine solution which removes the calcium and other minerals from the resin in exchange for sodium ions. When the water to be used in a home is run through the activated resin, the sodium ions are exchanged for calcium and other minerals in the water until the resin is in need of further reactivation as a result of contamination of the resin with the minerals. The resin itself is a granular material which is not water soluble and which may be retained by suitable scree-like devices and re-used essentially indefinitely by periodic reactivation, subject only to some loss due to spilling, crushing of the granules so that they will pass through the screens, etc.
In the prior art there are two basic methods of servicing the service tanks, that is, going from a service tank with resin therein in need of activation to a service tank having activated resin therein. These two methods have certain characteristics in common, by way of example, with both methods service tanks are returned to a central plant for reactivation. Accordingly, a serviceman or route man starts a particular route with a service truck loaded with reactivated service tanks, and at each service site exchanges the used service tank with a reactivated service tank so that at the end of the route the truck will be loaded with service tanks in need of reactivation. The truck then returns to the central plant and the used service tanks are removed from the truck.
In one method of reactiving the service tanks, each service tank is connected to a back-wash apparatus whereby water may be caused to flow through the service tank in the reverse direction with the resin therein being expanded as a result of the free separation of the granules to allow the water flow therebetween, the granules being retained by gravity in the lower portion of an open top container above each service tank so that excess water may flow over the top of the tank with the resin expanding only to a level below the top of the tank with the resin generally returning to the tank when the back flow is stopped (though in practice the equipment generally used often requires mechanical encouragement of the resin for complete return to the service tank). In essence, the resin temporarily removed from a particular service tank during this process is returned to the tank upon regeneration, and in fact, not all of the resin is removed from the tank during back wash but is merely expanded as a result of the back flow. Next, a brine solution regeneration, soft water rinse, and chlorinated water sterilization of the tank and resin completes the regeneration.
The other main method for servicing the service tank is to invert the service tank and pour out the resin into a central vat, whereby the resin may be reactivated in bulk and then returned to the service tanks to complete the process.
Both of these methods have certain characteristics with respect to equipment and manual operation which makes the overall operation quite expensive in comparison to the actual resin regeneration process itself. By way of example, for each truck there must be a full truckload of service tanks, a "float" of tanks in the regeneration plant being processed for the next day, plus extras for occasional replacement of defective tanks, by way of extra service tank inventory. This investment in inventory service tanks is very substantial even in comparison with the cost of the trucks themselves. Also, there is a great deal of hand labor in loading and unloading the trucks at the plant as a service tank, whether filled with used resin or reactivated resin, has a weight typically in the area of one-hundred fifty pounds or more and must be manually removed from and returned to the truck as well as manually or semi-manually dumped or attached to the regeneration equipment, depending on which method is used. Unloading and loading the truck at the end of the day may require as much as two hours, thereby decreasing the effective routine time in an ordinary working day and typing-up a great deal of equipment while doing so. Plant operators are normally required to assure proper regeneration of the service tank, etc. Consequently, with the prior art method there is a very substantial investment in equipment and extra service tanks, there is a large amount of manual labor required for the moving of service tanks and the loading and unloading of the trucks at the plant, and a permanent plant of substantial size is required to house the regeneration equipment and the like.
In my copending application I have disclosed a new and unique mobile system for accomplishing the required task, for which the present invention is an extension: